Why the UK is still a nation of small shopkeepers, even on the web

The 10 most visited UK shopping sites ending August 24, 2013 according to Retail Week magazine who use Hitwise, is shown below. As the table indicates, the market share is stable.

10 most visited UK shopping sites week ending August 24, 2013

This table only shows half a story though, because the top 10 make up just under 40% of the total shopping web sites. The following pie chart shows those top 10 as a pie chart along with the missing 60%.

Even this pie chart doesn’t show the full story though, because Hitwise should really aggregate the sites together – i.e. all the Amazon and eBay sites. Gumtree are owned by eBay so if we aggregate this with eBay, we get the following chart.

More than a third of shopping web site traffic in the UK goes to these two US companies, and are then followed by Argos who have less than 2% of traffic. Perhaps this goes to show the UK is still a nation of small shopkeepers.